מִקְדָּשׁ
sanctuary
also: sacred place, holy place fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 verse where H4720 appears in the Construct state in the Book of 1 Chronicles. Filtered view — show all forms. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
1 Chronicles
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
מקדש (miqdâsh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “sanctuary.” It first appears in Exodus 15:17. It turns up in 71 verses across 14 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in Ezekiel, which alone accounts for 39% of its uses. It also covers “sacred place” and “holy place”, alongside “sanctuary” — see its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4720 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 71
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 71 distinct verses.
- 14 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 14 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #536
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 536 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 71 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 71 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 37 verses · 52%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 19 verses · 27%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 15 verses · 21%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Sanctuary 56×, Sanctuaries 5×
- American Standard Version: Sanctuary 46×, Sanctuaries 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Sanctuary 60×, Sanctuaries 5×, Holy places 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Sanctuary 36×, Holy place 17×, The 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4720 across 74 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4720 across 74 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 23 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4720 across 74 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4720 across 76 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 6 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
- 1. old Isr. sanctuaries: of י׳ at Schechem Jos 24:26 (E); prob. also Ex 15:17 (i.e. Shiloh); pl. of sanct. to be destroyed by י׳ Lv 26:31 (H); מִקְדְּשֵׁי יִשׂ׳ in N. Isr. Am 7:9; מִקְדַּשׁ־מֶלֶךְ v 13 (Bethel). e.g. Joshua 24:26
- 2. of the nations: Moab Is 16:12 pl. of Tyre Ez 28:18 (Co Toy [not Berthol Krae] read קָדְשְׁךָ thy sanctity). e.g. Isaiah 16:12
- 3. tabernacle and its precincts Ex 25:8 (P) +; מִקְדַּשׁ הַקֹּדֶשׁ Lv 16:33, pl. 21:23. e.g. Exodus 25:8
- 4. temple and precincts 1 Ch 22:19 Is 63:18 ψ 74:7 +; בֵּית מִקְדָּשָׁם 2 Ch 36:17, מקדשׁ הבית Ez 48:21, מְבוֹן מ׳ Dn 8:11; pl. of many sacred places in and about the temple, מִקְדְּשֵׁי בית י׳ Je 51:51; מִקְדְּשֵׁי אֵל ψ 73:17. Doubtful are: מִמִּקְדָּשֶׁיךָ ψ 68:36 (𝔊 ἐν τοῖς ὁσίοις αὐτοῦ; 𝔙 de sanctuario; SS מִקְדָּשֶׁ֑ךָ); מִקְדָּשִׁים Ez 21:7 (𝔊 Co Berthol Buhl מִקְדָּשָׁם; Toy Krae מִקְדָּשֶׁיהָ; ‖ יְרוּשָׁלַםִ); וּמִקְדָּשׁ לַמִּקְדָּשׁ Ez 45:4b (Co, after 𝔊, מִפְקָד לְקָדְשָׁם [לְבָֽתֵּי]; Toy וּלְמִגְרָשִׁים [לְבָֽתִּים], cf. Krae לְמִגְרָשׁ). e.g. 1 Chronicles 22:19
- 5. י׳ will become לְמ׳ for his people Ez 11:16 (BrMP 268), so appar. Is 8:14 (but gloss Du CheHpt Marti; Lag Sem. i. 16 מִקָּשׁ i. e. stumbling-block [he cp. Syriac ܢܩܰܫ strike]). e.g. Ezekiel 11:16
- 6. of י׳’s future sanct., מ׳ בתוכם לעולם Ez 37:26, 28.—(מִמֶּנּוּ) אֶת־מִקְדְּשׁוֹ (מִכָּל־חֶלְבּוֹ) Nu 18:29 even the hallowed part thereof AV RV, but this not the meaning of מ׳; Ew§ 255 c assumes מַקְדֵּשׁ* in this sense; קָדְשׁוֹ (v. קֹדֶשׁ 3 d), מִ being dittogr. e.g. Ezekiel 37:26
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
n.m. Am 7:9 sacred place, sanctuary;—מ׳ Ex 25:8 +; מִקְדָשׁ 15:17 (Ges§ 20 h Köii. 1, 471); cstr. מִקְּדַּשׁ Lv 16:23 +; sf. מִקְדָּשִׁי Lv 20:3 +, etc., מִקְדְּשׁוֹ Nu 18:29 (Köii 1, 97); pl. מִקְדָּשִׁים Ez 21:7, cstr. מִקְדְּשֵׁי Je 51:51 + 2 times; sf. מִקְדָּשַׁי Lv 21:23; מְקַדְשֵׁיהֶם Ez 7:24 (on anomalous pointing v. Ew§ 215 a Hi-Sm; but prob. Pi. Pt. was in mind, Ges§ 9300 Anm.; מִקְדְּשֵׁיהֶם); etc.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קדש (qâdash) (H6942) — to consecrate.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
מִקְדָּשׁ
- sanctuary, esp. מִ׳ or בֵּית הַמִּ׳ (abbr. בה"מ) the Jerusalem Temple, contrad. to משכן the Tabernacle. M. Kat. 9ᵃ. Erub. 2ᵃ אשכחן משכן דאיקרי מ׳ ומ׳ וכ׳ we find that the Tabernacle is sometimes called miḳdash, and the Temple mishkan.—מ׳ ראשון the first Temple (the Solomonic Temple); מ׳ שני the second (post-exilic) Temple. Yoma 21ᵇ; a. e.—Ib. בשעה … בה"מ when Solomon had built the Temple; a. fr.—Pl. מִקְדָּשִׁים. Meg. 16ᵇ שני מ׳ two sanctuaries (that of Shiloh and the Jerusalem Temple); Yalk. Gen. 152.
מַקְדַּשׁ
- Targ. Ex. XXV, 8; a. fr.—Y. Ber. II, 5ᵃ top בֵּי מוּקְ׳, בֵּית = h. בית המקדש, v. preced.; Lam. R. to I, 16 בית מַקְדָּשׁוֹן דיהודאי (not מקדשין) the Temple of the Jews.—Pl. מַקְדְּשִׁין. Targ. Ez. XXI, 7; a. e.
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 51 distinct written forms H4720 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4720, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 68 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 71 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
- Exodus 15:17
- Leviticus 12:4
- Numbers 3:38
- Joshua 24:26
- 1 Chronicles 22:19
- 2 Chronicles 20:8
- Psalms 68:35
- Isaiah 8:14
- Jeremiah 17:12
- Lamentations 1:10
- Ezekiel 5:11
- Daniel 8:11
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
